


the wind across the stone

by any_open_eye



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, F/F, M/M, Post-Dishonored: Death of the Outsider
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:42:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26681596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/any_open_eye/pseuds/any_open_eye
Summary: "What does the Outsider want with Lord Attano? Do you think he means him harm?""I think it's more likely he's in love with him," Billie says. "Which isn't much better."Stilton laughs. "Being in love with an older man is worse than death, eh?"Billie knocks him in the shin with her heel. "That's not what I meant."(Billie Lurk finds herself the unwilling caretaker of a fallen god. She seeks help from an old friend, as the world and Void grow stranger around them.)
Relationships: Aramis Stilton/Original Male Character, Corvo Attano/The Outsider (Dishonored)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 114





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started out wanting to just write the Outsider and Corvo boning down, and it grew to include a lot of quipping and political intrigue. 
> 
> The working title of this fic was "the outsider hangs out with the lgbt community".
> 
> I'll add more pairings and tags as they become relevant, and the rating will almost certainly go up in later chapters.

Aramis Stilton is on his second brandy of the evening when his valet knocks softly on his office door. 

“Sorry to bother you, Aramis, but you’ve got a couple visitors.” 

The ice chips have melted to tiny shards; Stilton only allows himself two drinks on weeknights, and he wants to make it last. He rubs the condensation from his fingertips onto the linen of his trousers. “There’s nothing on the schedule, is there?” he asks, idiotically. It’s a quarter after midnight. Farid only answered the door because the rest of the staff are already gone for the night. Not even Silverhands Stilton takes business this late. 

“It’s Captain Foster,” Farid says. 

Stilton sits up straighter. “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place? I’ve told you, Meagan is always welcome.” 

Farid’s face does something complicated and troubling. He looks spooked, is the only word for it. Nerves drawn in so tight they’re squeaking. “Her companion...I just think you should see for yourself.” 

“Have them wait in the parlor. And open a Karnacan red, the year Meagan likes, I can’t remember. Farid?” he adds, when his valet doesn’t move. 

The young man shakes himself. “Of course. R-Right away.” He leaves, still wearing the same haunted look. 

Disquieted, Stilton knocks back the rest of his drink and follows. 

“I was hoping your insomnia would bear out in the end.” Meagan Foster of _The Dreadful Wale_ sits at the piano, plinking out a slow scale. The movement of her fingers is oddly mechanical, and Stilton watches for a few seconds, entranced.Still, he is overwhelmed with relief at the sight of her. She’s not been in contact since the night they drank to poor, foolish Luca’s fate, trading shots of Bottle Street whisky across a table strewn with maps and assassination lists, as the Empress of the Isles slept off her bloody work in a cabin below. 

“Meagan, it’s been months! I’ve looked for the Wale in port registries, but you haven’t been checking in. I figured everything had gone off alright when Emily got put back on all the banners, but...by the Void, what happened to your eye?” 

Meagan's mouth twists. “Funny you should mention.” 

The chunk of black stone glimmers under soft electric light. It does not look natural. Even less natural than a huge hunk of rock attached to his friend’s face should. And the strangenesses don’t end there. Meagan appears underfed, and overtired. The hand that plays endless scales on the piano is not flesh, but cold, gleaming metal. Or perhaps bone. And there is a quality to her, a sense of depth that had not been there before. Standing near her makes him think of standing at the top of a mineshaft, the distant knowledge that he is only a few feet to an endless fall. 

“I didn’t know where else we could go,” she says, apologetic. 

“We? Yes, Farid said you’d brought a friend, but—. She nods toward the sofa, where a young man lies, so still that Stilton hadn’t even noticed him. He is dressed all in black, jacket ragged and weather stained, hair in ragged clumps against a gaunt face. He is colorless enough to be a corpse, but his chest rises and falls steadily. 

“Is he...alright?” 

“He’s fine. He’s moping.” 

“I am not,” says the boy, without opening his eyes. “Only, my head hurts.” 

“Your head always hurts,” mutters Meagan . 

Stilton looks between them. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure..?” 

“You know me, Aramis Stilton.” Pale eyes flutter open. “I was there with you the night you learned of Theodanis’s death, and they denied you entrance to the palace because of your callused hands and weathered face. I climbed the cliffs with you outside the city, and I looked down at the frothing sea. I listened with you to the call of the whales. I whispered your future into your ear.” 

Stilton stops breathing. 

His thoughts scatter, wild, fluttering back to the tall painting of a lonely stretch of beach that the housekeeper had convinced him was too dreary to have sitting above the fireplace. It looked too close to the Void for safety. Hanging such a thing wasn’t something a respectable man would do. 

There was no figure in that painting, but if there was, it would have been the boy currently laid out on his sette. 

“This—.” His voice squeezes out, quiet and raspy. “This can’t be—.” 

Meagan is frowning. “That was unkind,” she says to the boy. He shrugs and his eyes slipped closed again. 

“I’m sorry,” she says to Stilton. “He can be petulant.” 

“He can be…” Stilton’s lungs feel iced over. “Meagan, why is the Outsider on my sofa?” 

She shifts on the piano bench. The polished black bone of her right hand gleams and ripples with a strange light. Looking at it makes Stilton feel queasy. “I told you, I wasn’t sure where else to go. He’s...experiencing a hell of a lot at once. I don’t think he could stand another night of sleeping rough. It’s getting cold, and he’s feverish.” 

“The Outsider is...feverish?” 

He’s just repeating everything she says, but his mind has stalled like a broken mine cart. 

“It’s a long story.” Meagan sighs and rubs at her human eye. “Well, it’s not that long. I used to work for a man who was marked.” 

“Marked?” 

“By the Outsider.” 

“Right.” Stilton’s guts go very tight. He saw the mark the night Luca and his retinue of freaks pulled Delilah Copperspoon from out of the Void. He didn’t witness it, but he had the dubious pleasure of hosting their presence in his home for three whole days afterward. 

“I lost touch with him when I was younger.” He gets the impression that Meagan is choosing her words carefully. “I found him again recently. He asked me to kill the Outsider.” 

“What? How?” 

“It’s not important,” Meagan says. “The how of it. The gist is...he’s human now. Mortal. The Outsider’s reign has ended.” 

A gentle knock comes on the door, Farid entering with an uncorked bottle and three glasses. A consummate professional, he is unfazed by the scruffy boy laid out on the sofa, though his gaze flicks briefly to Meagan’s arm. 

“Farid, keep you and bless you, you’re my hero,” she says, even as she shrugs back into her jacket. There’s no hiding the eye, though. 

Farid smiles his professional smile and pours her a glass. He turns to Stilton. “Sir?” 

After a moment’s hesitation, Stilton nods. If a god in his sitting room isn’t worth breaking his two-drink rule, he doesn’t know what is. He is half-convinced this will all prove to be an elaborate prank pulled on one good friend by another. Though he can’t imagine how the boy discovered what happened the night of Theodanis’s death, or that Meagan would ever use it against him in service of a joke. 

The boy sits up and eyes the wine. 

“Do you drink?” Stilton hears himself ask. 

“He doesn’t,” Billie says .

The boy frowns. “I want to try it.” 

“It’ll just make your headache worse.” 

Farid looks at Stilton, who says, “He doesn’t have to drink it, if it isn’t to his taste.” 

Meagan shakes her head, but she doesn’t protest further. 

The boy looks up with those startling pale eyes as Farid gives him a glass. “Your sister never blamed you,” he says quietly. “She wishes you would write to her.” 

Farid yanks backward like he’s been slapped. Wine sloshes in the half empty bottle. 

“Trystan,” Meagan hisses. 

“I’ll just leave the bottle—.” Farid puts it down on the raw wood of the piano, something he would never do under routine circumstances. Beneath the dusting of freckles his warm brown skin has gone sallow. “Aramis—I mean, Sir, if there’s anything else—” 

“No Farid. Thank you.” He puts a brief hand on his shoulder. “Goodnight.” 

Stilton feels unsteady after his valet leaves. He didn’t even know he had a sister. 

“Why did you do that?” Meagan downs half her glass in one furious gulp. Void, but she looks tired. “Remember that talk about not drawing attention to yourself? That was the opposite of that!” 

The boy sniffs at his wine and wrinkles his nose. Understandable; Meagan’s tastes are robust. 

“He won’t say anything to anyone,” says the boy, “If Master Stilton asks him not to.” The corner of his mouth turns up. “You see, Farid hasn’t slept in the servant’s quarters in a very long time.” 

Stilton is on his feet. “Fucking--that really is the Outsider, you brought the thrice-damned Outsider into my house, Meagan!” 

“He isn’t the Outsider anymore, Aramis,” she says. “I told you.” 

“Void, I need to--.” He pulls in several hard breaths. The parlor fades and goes dark at the edges. He’s never passed out before, not even in the mines in the worst of the summer heat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout.” He doesn’t let himself look at the strange boy with startling eyes and a fount of all his secrets. “I need to be alone, to think. Meagan, you and your—you are both welcome here, of course you are. You know where the kitchens are, don’t eat anything in the third cupboard from the left, it’s Farid’s. Sleep anywhere you like, there’s guest rooms made up, you know where they are.” 

“Aramis, are you—.” Meagan puts her glass down and follows him to the door, dropping her voice. “I’m sorry about him, he doesn’t really know how to act like a person. I’m trying—.” She laughs humorlessly. “I’m trying to teach him, but I’ve never been fantastic it either.” 

“Then why bring him here?” Stilton drops his voice, although it’s impossible not to be overheard in the close space. “Beg pardon, Meagan, but why help him at all?” 

Her mouth does something very complex and self-effacing, and Stilton knows she’s been asking herself the same question. 

“Because I forced him to be human, and I know how much that hurts.” 

\--

Predictably, Billie wakes with her body aching, head fuzzy. She rolls over carefully, only to find she needn’t bother. The space beside her is empty. 

Last night after Stilton went to bed, the Outsider wandered off while Billie drank herself into a stupor on Stilton’s excellent wine. She found him curled up in the guest bed like a kitten, shoes and all, dead asleep. She wrestled off his jacket and dirty boots, before crawling in beside him. 

It’s far too early for her to be awake, considering the hangover, but her brain rarely lets her settle back down once she’s awake. 

Billie sits up and considers briefly, before downing half an elixir. On the road she wouldn't dream of wasting one, but Aramis probably has plenty. She doesn't like taking charity, typically, but she’s just brought him the most wanted man in the Empire, so they've blasted far past casual favors. 

She splashes water on her face, wincing at the false eye, before pulling on her jacket and heading downstairs. 

A few of the household staff greet her with cautious pleasure; they know her by sight, if not by name. Their master's oldest friend. The one he trusts with all his secrets. She only has to say a couple words "tall, pale" before she is pointed in the direction of the east veranda. She finds the Outsider sitting in a pool of sunlight, an untouched cup of coffee at his elbow. 

“Good morning.” The Outsider smiles. He’s gotten much better at it over the last few weeks. It almost looks natural. 

“Morning.” Billie rubs at her eyes, reaching automatically for the carafe and an empty cup. The smell of coffee revives her substantially. The Outsider wrinkles his nose as he watches her. 

“It’s awful,” he says. “I already tried it.” 

“The point of coffee isn’t to taste good,” Billie says. “And you could try adding milk.” 

The Outsider frowns. “Milk makes me sick.” He looks so put out about it that Billie laughs. 

“Well, it’s better not to drink it if you can avoid it, honestly. Coffee is addictive and expensive.” 

He nods. He might be mopey and insolent at times, but the Outsider listens to her when she tells him things. Small, inconsequential details of humanity that have slipped his notice. Not much point in internalizing how various substances affect the body when you didn’t have a digestive tract. 

Billie rotates her right shoulder. The Outsider's pale gaze moves over her arm and down to her hand. "Is it painful?" 

She shakes her head. "It's not the arm. I know it sounds like penny dreadful nonsense, but I have trouble with beds.” She's spent so much time sleeping rough that sometimes it feels like her body has transmuted to something denser than flesh. Well, in addition to the parts of her that actually have.

"I found the bed very comfortable," the Outsider says. "Isn't Aramis Stilton your friend? You could stay here more often." 

Billie shrugs. “I don’t like to impose.” 

She doesn’t add that being in a place like this feels dirty, indecent. She doesn’t blame Aramis for his amassed luxury. At least, not as much as she used to. He grew up the same way she had—in the dirt. He’d lifted himself out of it, while she’d just burrowed deeper down. 

The Outsider sniffs at the coffee again, as if trying to understand what makes Billie suck it down so enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically, maybe. It’s settling badly with the elixir. “You could marry him,” the Outsider says. “I think that if you asked him, he would say yes.” 

Billie almost spits out her mouthful. “Marry Aramis?” She laughs. The Outsider looks annoyed, like he thinks he’s just made a very clever suggestion that Billie is dismissing. “I’m not...exactly his type.” 

"But humans often marry for reasons other than love, don't they?" 

"Yes, you're right." Of course he knows that; he's concerned himself with the rise and fall of empires for thousands of years. He knows what the upper classes are like. "But Aramis and I...I do love him. In a way. It's a different sort of love than you marry for." 

"Oh." The Outsider frowns. "But you do find him attractive." 

Billie splutters. She's seriously got to stop putting shit into her mouth when this little idiot is running his. "How—how could you possibly know that?” 

"Your heartbeat elevates and your pupils dilate slightly when you talk to him. Your skin gets a little warmer." 

"I—." Billie puts her cup down. "You can tell all of that without your powers?" 

He shrugs. "It isn't hard. I notice things. That's all I did for millennia." 

“Well—.” Speaking to the Outsider feels like constantly struggling to climb a hill made out of gravel, constantly falling out from under her. Being constantly one-upped in conversation by someone who looks young enough to be her son is annoying. “Just because you find someone attractive doesn’t mean you want to marry them, Outsider’s eyes.” Fuck. She’s going to need to retire that particular curse, seeing as how often those eyes are trained on her, disquietingly pale. Billie wonders if they were like that before, or if the Void somehow leached them of their color. 

“I’ve upset you,” the Outsider says.

She sighs. “You haven’t. It’s alright.” 

“You are very willing to forgive me,” he says. 

When the Outsider focuses on you, he gives his whole attention, like a butcher hacking away at a whale’s outer skin. He does not fidget, he hold solid eye contact, and he doesn’t make small talk. It’s unusual to the point of being unnerving. 

"I don't forgive you for anything," Billie says. "But I don't blame you, either." 

A line creases between his eyes. "I don't understand." 

“I don’t feel like explaining it to you.” 

“Please?” 

She grunts. “You’re insufferable.” 

"No, I'm fine." 

Billie sighs. She squares the handle of her cup with the edge of the table. “When I was young, my father threw me out onto the street. Doesn’t matter why. I was glad to be gone. I stole all the money he hadn’t drunk away and I left.” She looks back up. “Don’t you already know all of this? You never marked me, but I’m one of the ones who had your ‘interest’, whatever that means.” 

The Outsider folds his hands on the tabletop. In the morning sunlight he looks sickly. The light of the void is kind to his complexion; true daylight is not. "I've already told you, Billie. I was never omniscient. I could not be everywhere at all times. And I don't read human minds. Just actions. So if you ever told this story, I was not there to hear it." 

"Not important enough, I'd wager." 

"As you say. But I would like to hear it now." 

"Hmm." She adds milk to her coffee. She can drink it black, but why do it if she doesn't have to? "Anyway, I was on the streets. Luckily I had cultivated skills by then—pickpocketing, housebreaking, mugging. I took money from anyone I could, even from those who needed it more than I did. I kicked a pair of grimy twins out of the abandoned flat they were squatting inside and made it my own. I was stronger than them, so I took what they had." 

"You don't blame me, because you have also committed acts that many would consider evil." 

"No. I don't blame you because I understand survival. You didn't ask to be made what you are. Neither did I." 

The Outsider looks at her like she has surprised him. “I can say confidently that most of what I did during my tenure in the void was out of amusement, not survival.” 

The oak tree sways slowly above the veranda, every so often dropping an acorn. 

"People need amusement," Billie says. "Else they go insane." 

"But—." 

"Listen, it's too early for this," she groans. "I'm too hungover. I've just brought all kinds of hell down on a very good friend of mine, and it's because of you. This is not a good time to prod at the gymnastics I've had to perform with my moral sense in order to help you. You were small and afraid, and I didn't want to kill you, alright?"

A gentle cough lets her know they are no longer alone. Stilton’s valet stands in the door to the veranda, looking just as uncomfortable as he had the evening before. “Pardon my interruption.” He clears his throat and edges forward. “But Mr. Stilton asks that you join him for breakfast.” 

“Uh, sure,” Billie says, uncomfortable with the formality. When she eats with Aramis it’s typically in the kitchen, long after the staff have left for the night, picking at cold bits of meat and heels of bread, generally behaving like the gutter rats they’d grown up as. 

“Farid—.” The Outsider catches Stilton’s valet’s hand as he draws away. “I mean, Mr. Nasser.” He looks the young man squarely in the eyes. “I’m sorry about what I said last night. It was rude of me. I apologize.” 

“Um—.” Farid licks his lips nervously. He doesn’t look in the least bit reassured. “Whenever you’re ready I can bring you through to the Central Courtyard.” 

"How many courtyards does this damn place have?" Billie mutters. 

"Four," the Outsider says without missing a beat. 

Farid’s gaze flicks back in his direction. "Five, if you count the swimming pool. This way, if you please." 

"Stop doing that," Billie hisses to the Outsider, as they pass through a set of double doors and into a grand hallway complete with skylights and carefully matched furniture. 

"What am I doing?" 

"Being so strange to him. He's not done anything to deserve it except try to do his job, and you're just saying odd things. We've talked about you keeping a low profile, but—.” 

Farid turns around so sharply in the corridor that Billie almost barrels into him. 

"With all due respect, Ms. Foster, I know that's the Outsider. I'm not a simpleton." 

Billie looks at him, slender and clean-shaven with well-oiled curls and flawlessly pristine gloves, and thinks that she wouldn't want to go toe-to-toe with him, even with a sword in each hand. 

"Void, Farid. Call me Meagan. I'm no more your better than a sewer rat is mine." 

"Then don't treat me like I don't have a brain in my head." Farid smiles brilliantly and turns back to double doors. 

"I think he likes me better than you," the Outsider comments archly. 

Stilton looks how Billie feels; hungover and like a hurricane has blown through his life. Still, he stands up in greeting when Farid brings them through to the main courtyard. "Good morning, good morning. Please sit, I wasn't sure what to order from the kitchens, so I thought I'd just have them make you a Karnacan breakfast, I know it's a little rich, feel free to pick and choose." He's tapping his ring against the surface of the table, a nervous gesture left over from years ago. "I haven't slept much, I'm afraid, so if I'm blurry, don't--." 

"It's alright, Aramis," Billie grunts, sitting down and rotating her sore shoulder. "We're all a little blurry. Except for your valet, it would seem." 

Stilton smiles. "He's something, isn't he." 

“I like him,” the Outsider says. He sticks his littlest finger into the honey, tasting. The look on his face is unguardedly pleased. Billie nudges cutlery at him, hoping he’ll get the hint. He doesn’t. “I would have liked to watch him, I think, back in the Void.” 

“That’s a compliment,” Billie explains, at Stilton’s nonplussed stare. 

“T-Thank you, then,” Stilton says. "On Farid's behalf." 

The Outsider shrugs. 

The spread truly is a Karnacan breakfast, meaning delicious, but absolutely worthless when it comes to fuel for a decent day's work. Back on the Wale, breakfast was bread and bacon when she could get it, oatmeal when she couldn't. This is flaky pastries glazed with honey and hazelnuts, little dishes of figs, an arrangement of fresh fruit, thick yogurt, and as if that weren't enough sweets to be going on with, a pitcher of drinking chocolate. 

She spoons a helping of plain yogurt into her dish, and after a moment's consideration, adds honey. No point trying to maintain her figure. Can you even gain weight when you're part skeleton? 

The Outsider nibbles daintily at the edge of a pastry. "Coffee?" Stilton offers him. And, "Chocolate?" when he wrinkles his nose. 

"You'll like it," Billie says, when he looks at her questioningly. "You seem to like sweets. It might be a little much for your stomach, though, so go slowly." 

The surreality of the scene is so intense, but then again, everything has been since she emerged from the silver mine beside the blinking, unsteady form of a fallen god. She found that the only way to cope with it was to just go on as if everything were normal. To talk to the Outsider like he was anyone else. Stilton appears to be adopting the same strategy.

"I'm sorry if we kept you up last night," Billie says. 

Stilton waves a hand. "On the contrary. I kept myself up. I was amassing a list of the things you'll need. Papers, of course. You can't get far in Serkonos without them. Those shouldn't be too hard. I didn't get much further than that, though, since I realized that first I needed to ask—." He pauses a moment to take a delicate bite of a pastry. “—Ask what your plans are. Usually people only come to me when they need one of two things: work, or a loan." 

The Outsider thinks for a moment. “Do you have a boat?" 

Stilton blinks. "Yes? A small one. But doesn't Meagan—.” 

"She burned hers down," the Outsider says. 

Stilton pauses. “…On purpose?” 

"Yes," Billie says. "I wasn't really in the best frame of mind. In retrospect, it might have been a little hasty." But she would do it again. Daud deserved that much. In fact, deserved so much more than an old leaking tub in the Karnacan sunset. "It'll take me a little while to get the money together to buy anything that can cross open ocean, though.” She's had this conversation with the Outsider, repeatedly. 

"Meagan, you know if you ever need coin—." Stilton clears his throat. “That is to say, I can buy you a ship." 

"I know you can," she says evenly. She lets it sit heavily like a rock at the bottom of a well, until Stilton lets the matter go. 

"Anyway, why do you need a boat. Sightseeing, is it?" He gives the Outsider a cautious smile. The Outsider gives him one back. Billie wonders if it's genuine, or simply mimicry. 

"He wants to go to Dunwall," she says. 

Stilton looks back at him. "For the Empress?" 

"For Corvo," The Outsider says. "I suppose the Empress will be there too, since it is her kingdom." 

"Corvo—you mean, the Lord Protector?" Stilton tips his head to one side. "We've never met." 

“He’s practically obsessed with him,” Billie says into her yogurt. 

“He’s one of your…” 

“He was,” says the Outsider. “He was one of my marked, before he was taken from me.” His voice darkens. “Delilah Copperspoon took my sigil when she took Dunwall. Without my protections, he was defenseless against her.” 

“And now the Empress bears your mark instead. Does it still work?” 

Billie and the Outsider share a glance. “I can’t say for sure.” 

“The Void, it’s…it’s still there, isn’t it? It hasn’t vanished.” 

"The Void will be here long after your world is gone," says the Outsider. It sounds like a threat, but that's just the way he talks, Billie's realized. Gaining mortality has not lessened his flair for drama. "Imagine..." He moves his plate to the side, spilling out a drop of the chocolate onto the surface of the table. Billie bites down on her immediate inclination to scold him. "You humans pretend that you live at the center of the universe, that the Void is simply a dark room in the corner of a large, brightly lit house. A place to keep all of your unwanted things, better left alone. But the Void is everything, and your world a tiny, seething drop in the center of of that. And one day—.” He swipes his fingers through the chocolate. “It will dry up to nothing.” 

Stilton stares at him for a few seconds, mouth slightly open. It rather reminds Billie of the way she’s seen men look at their first storm on open water. Awe, fear, and nervous, half-mad euphoria. 

“So yes, the Void is still there. I am simply no longer a conduit between the Void and your world. That’s all I ever was.” 

Stilton clears his throat. “The Abbey would beg to differ.” 

“The Abbey is full of raving fools desperate for my attention.” The Outsider’s mouth turns up at one corner. “They writhe and pant, moaning their disgust to one another and the world. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I could tell you—.” 

Stilton leaves his breakfast completely aside. His focus is riveted on the young god at his table. “Oh?” 

“I’m too tired for tawdry Overseer stories, Aramis,” Billie says, and means it. She needs that like she needs the fly that’s just attempted to drown itself in her drink. 

“Fair enough,” Stilton says gamely. “I imagine you’ll be staying for a while, plenty of time for smut.” 

“I told you—.” The Outsider’s eyes are so pale that in this light they almost look white. “I’m going to Dunwall. I’ll find my own way, if neither of you are inclined to help.” 

Billie snorts. “Please. You’ll wind up robbed and dead in a ditch within a week. And you won’t find anyone setting out for at least another month. They don't call it the Month of Winds for nothing."

The Outsider’s frown grows to mythic proportions. “I’ll find my own way,” he says again. 

“And what do you propose to do for money?” Billie asks. “You’re a shit pickpocket.” 

“I’ve never tried to pickpocket.” 

“That means you’re shit at it.” 

He shrugs. It’s the one human mannerism he’s got down to an art. “There’s always a demand for men who look like me.” 

Stilton spills a bit of coffee over his wrist. “You mean—generally or specifically?” 

“Both,” says the Outsider. “A fair few whores across the Isles ply their trade making themselves look like me, dressing up in black and threatening paying customers with the touch of the Void.” 

Stilton’s eyes bug and his mouth works. His cheeks have gone distinctly crimson. "I—you—." Billie hides a grin in her cup. Stilton looks at her for help. 

She lifts a shoulder. "There's worse ways to make money," she says, stirring almonds into her yogurt. "I've made money in worse ways. Hell, I've made money in worse ways in the last month." 

Stilton's fluster is charming, and ironic, seeing as how she knows he’s no fainting lily. Is he feigning preciousness because the Outsider is a stranger, or because he is young? The Outsider seems to be wondering along similar lines. 

"Are you not aware of what they say about me, Aramis Stilton? That I am a bringer of moral iniquity, a tempter, a liar? A thief of virgins and a blighter of crops? I am the reason that wives leave their husbands and whales kill sailors. When a man raises a hand against a woman, I was beside him, whispering in his ear. When a cutthroat leaves a body in the gutter, I was the one who guided his hand." 

Stilton’s fingers have gone nerveless on his spoon. "Are you?"

"Am I what?" 

"All of those things?" 

The Outsider cocks his head like a bird. "I have been all of those things before. I don't make a habit of it. I very rarely bother with people." 

"How do you choose?" 

"I don't know," he says, which Billie knows to be a lie. "But I know I am going to Dunwall." 

"Is...seeing this man really that important to you?" 

"It doesn't matter whether or not it is important. It is what I am doing." 

"Then..." Stilton chews at his bottom lip, a nervous habit Billie knows he hates. "Then let me write to the Lord Protector. Or better yet, I'll get the Duke to write to him. He has become..." Stilton's voice grows heavy with wry satisfaction. "Remarkably accommodating of late." 

"Yes, a change of heart," the Outsider agrees. He stands. "Alright. I will wait for him to write." 

With that, he walks out into the garden, and toward the house. "Don't scare anyone!" Billie calls after him. He waves. 

When he's out of sight, Stilton lets out a long, slow breath. "My god." 

"He's...intense," Billie says. 

"I can't rightly—." Stilton pulls a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and mops at his face. "I don't even know that I'm awake. I feel as if I must have passed out at my desk last night before you arrived, and now I'm trapped in a Void dream, where I will be expected to entertain the oldest creature in existence, lest tragedy befall me and my family." 

"Well," Billie says. "I think he can entertain himself, and I am the closest thing to family you have. And I've already had tragedy befall me." 

"You talk to him like...what did you call him last night? Trystan? That was the name of your—." 

"My brother, yes." Perhaps a mistake, in retrospect. It's probably why she feels the constant need to tell him to sit up straight and watch his language. "Although the papers we filled out at the city wall say that he's my son." 

"Your son?" 

"I thought it would be more believable than brother." 

"And...did the guards not comment on..." 

"How pale he was? I told them they should see his father." 

The two of them look at each other, before dissolving into laughter. Stilton reaches across the table and grips her hand. "It's good to see you, Meagan. I've missed you." 

She hesitates just for a moment. "Call me Billie. There's no reason not to, anymore. I've been officially pardoned." 

That had been surreal to the point of impossibility. She had no post box or permanent residence, so it seemed that what Emily had elected to do was just hang notices and have proclamations read out at annoyingly common intervals, until everyone who didn't already know about Billie Lurk, well, still didn't know who she was or what she had done to get herself excommunicated and then pardoned, but they sure as hell knew they would punch her lights out the first crack they got, seeing as she was the reason they never had a minute of peace. 

Eventually it got to the point that Billie had just started scribbling "OKAY, I GOT IT" on every notice she found, signing it with a crude rendering of Emily's signet ring. It must have worked, because the announcements stopped, and her wanted posters disappeared. 

It hasn't really sunk in yet, that if she wanted to let a flat, or work a job, or show her face in a respectable bar, she could. Well, half her face, at least. She's still got a very prominent problem that the Overseers are unlikely to let slide. 

"What do you think about this?" Stilton asks. 

"What do I think about what?" 

"Him. The Outsider. And Lord Attano. Do you think he wants to hurt him?" 

Billy scrapes up the last bit of her yogurt. "I think it's more likely he's in love with him." At Stilton’s noise of mirthful delight, she adds, “Don't get too excited. I'm not honestly sure that's much better." 

Stilton laughs. "Being in love with an older man is worse than death, eh?" 

Billie knocks him in the shin with the tip of her boot. “That’s not what I meant. Besides, the Lord Protector isn't the old one in this scenario. Nothing has ever ended well for a mortal beloved of a god. Didn't your parents ever read you stories?" 

"Never," Stilton says. "Besides. He isn't a god anymore." 

“True,” says Billie, “But I’m not sure that’s something you ever get over.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the incredibly kind comments! i'm glad people are as excited as I am to watch the outsider interact with the Karnacan queer community.

Lord Protector Corvo Attano receives the first letter on the 7th day of the Month of Winds during, predictably, a storm. Rain threatens on the horizon and the wind whips the waves in the bay to a creamy froth. 

Before, the storm would have called him up and out. Since the day he emerged scarred and starving from Coleridge prison, he’s longed for the sky whenever the weather turns. The kinetic energy of the Void howled, pounding against the architecture of his veins until he gave in, blinking from rooftop to rooftop to the highest point. Somehow he was never afraid of lightning. The storm felt...not friendly, exactly. Nothing that wild could ever be truly benevolent. But...familiar. In kind. The storm greeted him like a companion. 

He did not always give into the urge, but when he did, it was ecstatic. Almost as good as touching the mark to the glowing power of a shrine, or depleting his entire reserve of mana in one glorious surge. An addictive, terrifying compulsion. 

Sometimes he watched the storms alone. For others he had company. 

The draw became less as he aged—perhaps as his body tired, or as he built up a tolerance to the Void’s energy. And now, well. Now he’s lost his chance. Or had it taken from him. 

When he reads the letter, it doesn’t trigger much concern, past a certain unpleasant squirm in his guts at the Abele family crest. The Duke is a changed man—literally—thanks to Emily, but Corvo will never forget the pudgy, gleeful face as Delilah stripped the mark from his body with a surge of black fire and set him to stone. 

The Duke of Karnaca’s missive sends greetings and wishes of good health to her Imperial Majesty and the Lord Protector, as well as a request for their presence in the city as soon as the weather permits, to deal with a potentially sensitive matter that naturally cannot be described in a letter. 

Corvo adds it to the growing pile of invitations. _We’ll deal with you when the time comes, Abele, get in line._

A few more letters come through during the Month of Wind, becoming increasingly difficult to parse. The Duke very clearly wants Corvo and the Empress in Karnaca, but he won’t say for what, or even how urgent it is. 

“I can’t make heads or tails of this,” he mutters. 

“Hmm?” Emily looks up from the requisition request she’s reading. Her hair is down and damp around her shoulders, and she looks so much like her mother it makes Corvo's chest ache. 

The two of them have taken to meeting in the Lord Protector’s study in the early morning, talking over the day’s schedule or dissecting reports from the lower city. Emily picked up the Karnacan habit of beginning every day with strong coffee and frothed milk, and Corvo was only too happy to go back to it. Too much time has passed for him to think of Serkonos as home, but moments of sense memory still fill him with warm nostalgia 

He values these morning conversations, and not just because they let him prepare for the day. They give him a chance to be Emily’s father, rather than simply her bodyguard. Despite his affair with Jessamine being a more-or-less open secret, Emily's bastard status will never be far from the mouths of her dissenters. She isn’t ashamed of it, but she’s careful. 

Sometimes Corvo wishes that he’d taken Jessamine up when she asked him to marry her. He would have been stripped of his role as Lord Protector, and he had no desire to be Emperor. But sometimes he wishes he’d done it, if only to save Emily some pain. 

“This letter.” He passes it to her across the desk. “From an Aramis Stilton.” 

“Oh, Stilton?” Emily puts her cup down and smoothes out the thick parchment. "Interesting. He's on the Duke's council, but I haven't heard anything from him since I came home." 

“He’s the...Silver Baron?” Emily had recounted her adventures to Corvo, but there were so many names that he tended to confuse them. “The one you saved from madness?" 

"I didn't save him, precisely." She takes a bite from her apple. An unusual combination of flavors, going from coffee to fruit, but Emily never seems to mind. "I just stopped him from ever going mad in the first place. I didn't even mean to," she admits with a small grin. "I just needed him to stop shouting." 

"The Outsider never offered me the ability to travel through time," Corvo says, with only half-feigned insult. 

Emily's grin becomes smug. "Perhaps he just likes me better." 

"I hope not," Corvo says. "For your sake." 

_Corvo...you fascinate me._

He clears his throat, hoping it clears his head. “How’s it doing?” 

Emily doesn't need to ask what he means. She transfers the apple to her right hand so she can spread the fingers of her left. She keeps the mark hidden beneath fingerless gloves, claiming an unsightly burn endured during her time as an outlaw, but many people suspect. Only the Abbey’s recent decimation has so far allowed her to avoid censure. They’ll be forced to deal with it eventually, of course, and Corvo is taking steps to ensure that it’s nothing but a public bluster. Just another rumor swirling about the whore Empress and her witch father, the two of them opening up their minds and bodies to the Void for power and dominance. 

And it isn’t even untrue, when all’s said and done. Though the adjectives might need rearranging. Since Corvo had the child out of wedlock and Emily is the one with the mark. The mark which, recently, has been performing strangely. 

"It doesn't hurt anymore," Emily says, flexing her fingers. "Or maybe I'm just getting used to the ache. It's...more volatile than it was before. Sometimes it doesn't work at all, and sometimes it's like tearing the spigot off a pipe. I'll travers an entire district in one reach." 

"You haven't been using it, have you?" 

Emily hesitates. 

“Em.” He sighs. He can’t blame her, really. The call is so very hard to resist. Having the mark and not using it is like doing your very best not to lift your arms. Muscle memory makes it almost impossible. “You’ve tried talking to him, haven’t you?” 

She nods. "I've even gone looking for shrines. I know, I know, I shouldn't. But I don't know what else to do.” Her voice goes tight at the corners. If she was still young, she would have teared up. A sure way to get him to go easy on her. "What does the letter say?" 

"Nothing out of the ordinary," Corvo says. "Which is precisely why it strikes as strange. I received similar letters from Duke Abele. Your Duke Abele, mind, not the one rotting in Addemire." 

Another thin smile. 

"It's just...pleasantries. Requests for your presence in the Southern Isles, and mine, specifically." 

Emily's brows pull in. "Hold on a minute." She finishes her apple and tosses the core, before pushing away from the desk and vanishing into the corridor. She's back in a moment, carrying another letter made from the similar parchment. Identical, in fact. 

"I got a letter from Meagan," she says. "Billie Lurk, I mean." 

"Is that right?" Corvo growls. He disapproves of Emily's association with the former mercenary, as well as the pardoning of someone directly related to Jessamine's death. But he’s made hard decisions in his time. He understands loyalty, and he understands making amends. And at the end of the day, Emily is the Empress, and he isn’t. 

Just, if it had been him, Billie Lurk's body would have washed up on the Karnacan beaches, gutted like a fish. That’s all. 

"Have you gotten a letter from her before?" 

"Never," Emily says. "And most of the things she says are...nonsense. Things that never happened." 

"Is it an imposter, then?" 

"I'd have thought so, but there are details in here that only Billie could know." 

Corvo puts a hand out for the correspondence. Emily pulls back. "Um. The details are a little..." He notices a distinct glow around her ears. Ah. 

"I trust your judgement," he says after a moment. "If you think it's strange, it's strange. Does she make any requests?" 

"Just...the same as the Duke's and Stilton's. Asking that I come as soon as I'm able. And you too." She spreads the letters out together on the desk. "Are you thinking there could be some sort of pattern between them, or code?" 

"It's possible." 

"Stilton and Billie are friends," Emily says. "In fact, she lost her eye and arm trying to find Stilton when he vanished." 

"Oh," Corvo says, doing his best to sound concerned. "How awful." 

"Don't worry," Emily says, sly. "I got them back for her." 

"How—." 

"Magic." 

Of course. 

He can't help smiling. His daughter, the witch, the warrior, the most powerful woman in all of the Empire. Emily, who cured the rat plague, who stopped a conspiracy, who took a throne at eleven. Sometimes it's overwhelming, how proud of her he is. The two of them have worked so hard to hold the Isles together. 

"I think we should go to Karnaca," she says. 

"What? Right now?" 

"No, obviously." She pushes a damp piece of hair out of her face. "We'll wait until spring. Beginning of Seeds, at least. It's too dangerous to sail right now, considering." 

Corvo murmurs agreement. In addition to Emily's mark misfiring, other oddities have cropped up across the isles. Reports of unseasonal whale migrations, unusually aggressive animals and plant growth, an obscene number of falling stars. People go missing and crop back up hundreds of miles away from where they were. Children are born with black eyes. Things that, separately, could be written off as the everyday strangeness that leaks out from the Void. But taken all together...

"I can't help feeling like this has something to do with...everything," Emily says after a moment, echoing his thoughts. "It hasn't gotten bad enough that I think we should toss the calendar in the garbage and immediately make for Serkonos, Wyman's in Dunwall next week and I'd hate to miss them." 

"Of course." 

Emily checks the time. "Void, I need to get dressed. I'll see you at breakfast." She drops a quick kiss on his cheek and breezes away. 

After she leaves, Corvo sits down at his desk and lays all the letters out again, hoping for a pattern. He wishes he had Lurk's letter as well, although he has no desire to read any of the more salacious details of his daughter's four months spent on a smuggler's ship, in doubtless incredibly close quarters. He's already had to spend far more time than is comfortable thinking about and discussing Emily's love life, considering that by royal precedent she must produce an heir before she turns thirty. A royal wedding needs to take place within the next few years. As Royal Protector, Corvo must vet any potential candidates. Of course, her mother managed an heir quite handedly without a spouse, but Emily’s reign has been contested often enough that tradition is their best recourse. 

Corvo rubs at his eyes. Only a few hours past dawn and he's already exhausted. The Month of Seeds can't come fast enough. He could use a vacation. 

\--

Hosting the Outsider in his home is not the strangest thing Stilton has ever done, but it’s certainly the most awkward. Staff keep coming upon the boy in the most unlikely places—the kitchen larder, the veranda roof, the wine cellars, the kennels. He isn't doing anything nefarious, he just seems to have very little regard for his surroundings. 

Late one afternoon in the Month of High Cold, Stilton comes into his chambers to find the Outsider asleep in his bed, curled up with his arms around a pillow. He stands in the threshold for a moment, struck dumb, before swiftly closing the door behind him. There's already enough talk around the house about Stilton's pretty young guest, and there's nothing that annoys Stilton more than being gossiped about for trysts he didn't even have. 

The Outsider is lovely. There's no two ways about it. Willowy and lithe, with cheekbones sharp enough to cut crystal, eyes pale and mesmerizing. He feels churlish admitting it, but the Outsider turning out to be as beautiful as his artist renderings certainly softened his feelings towards the boy’s oddities. He can't help suspecting that Meagan— _Billie, Aramis, she's Billie now_ —had known this, and had factored it in when she brought him. She knows Aramis has never been able to say no to a pretty face. 

Not that he’d fuck the Outsider. Not that he’d ever want to. 

Distantly, he wonders what the Lord Protector has that he doesn't. 

_A title, for one thing_ , says that nasty little voice in his head that used to shout back when he’d first bought himself into high society, when Theo began bringing him to parties on his arm, showing off his miner’s biceps and rough hands. _You don’t belong here, you are nothing, you will never measure up._

He could have had a title, he knows. All he’d had to do was let Luca run roughshod across the miners, reducing Battista to a pile of dust. Never. Never while he still lives. 

Stilton is unsure how to proceed, so he sets about making as much noise as possible, shuffling papers, rattling dishes, even playing a new audiograph. It’s one of Farid’s; Stilton’s never cared much for opera. 

The Outsider murmurs and curls more tightly into himself, before sitting up abruptly. “Where…” The Outsider deflates. He pulls his knees into his chest. “Of course.” 

Stilton turns off the audiograph. “Lost?” 

The Outsider seems to make a conscious effort to relax. “I was looking for a book. I thought it might be in here.” 

“I see. Well, if you need anything, feel free to ask Farid. Or anyone else, for that matter, as I’ve told you before.” More than once. 

“I’m not used to places that are barred to me,” says the Outsider.

“Yes, I suppose that must take some getting used to,” Stilton says. “Locked doors, and all that. Was there anywhere you couldn’t venture? Abbeys, surely.” 

“On the contrary, I was always welcome at the Abbey of the Everyman.” The Outsider smirks, and something prickles at the base of Stilton’s spine. “Haven’t you ever heard that thinking on a thing gives you power? I would not be known as widely as I am if it weren’t for the Overseers’ valuable work. Spreading my name, speaking my works.” The smile grows colder. “In a way, they are my most faithful.” 

"Ah." Stilton doesn't know how to behave around this boy. How to treat him. Like a man, like a youth? Like a friend? An intimate? He knows how to address miners, nobles, and creditors. How does one address a fallen god? 

The Outsider tips his head in consideration. “You’re afraid of me. No, not afraid. Disquieted. I am sorry to disturb your peace.” 

Stilton snorts. “Well, perhaps you should have thought of that before curling up in man’s bed like a present waiting to be unwrapped.” 

The Outsider blinks. 

Stilton flushes. “Forgive me, that was crude.” 

"Was it?" The Outsider stretches out his lithe, slender body, so that his borrowed shirt rises enough to show skin. That can't be an accident. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember what is crude, truly, and what is simply the blustering of fools. I am not offended by your desire for me.” 

Stilton’s flush extends all the way down his chest. 

The Outsider smiles. “I can tell by your face that is one of the things I shouldn’t say. Apologies. I’ve upset you.”

“No—no, you haven’t, it’s alright.” Stilton glances at the clock. Well. It’s five o’clock in Dunwall, as they say. He crosses to the cabinet and pours himself a finger of whisky. “I’m just not used to folk as forthright as you. I used to be, once.” 

“When you worked in the mines.” 

Stilton knocks back the drink. It burns all the way down. Garbage stuff, but his tastes have never really left the gutter, especially when he’s alone. “How much do you know about me?” 

“Hmm…some. You aren’t one of my marked, so I haven’t sought out all there is to know about you, but you are, were…a point of convergence.” 

“I’m sorry?” 

“It’s not easy to explain,” the Outsider says. He is still seated quite comfortably in Stilton’s bed. He looks good there. Stilton begins to regret the whisky. 

“In the Void, I did not simply see the future. I saw…potential futures. Paths that the world could travel down. Events and people stood out brightly because they were places where many possible futures met and crossed.” 

“Like the Lord Protector,” Stilton guesses. “And Meagan. Billie.” 

The Outsider inclines his head. “I have known for many centuries that an orphan from Morley would be the one to end me, some day. I didn’t know when, and I didn’t know how. But I knew her when I saw her. And as for Corvo, well—.” His voice becomes almost comically dreamy when he talks about Corvo Attano. Stilton takes another shot of whisky. Fuck it. “Corvo is the brightest convergence of all. So many potential futures spin from his hands.” 

“Is that why you’re so obsessed with him?” 

“Obsessed?” The Outsider looks down at his folded hands. “I suppose I am, in a way. I don’t see any reason to hide it.” 

“Clearly.” Stilton clears his throat. Well, if the Outsider really is all about brutal honesty…”Are you…were you queer, then?” 

“Hmm?” 

God, this is unbelievable, this thing he’s doing. “You…the way you talk about Lord Attano, it sounds like you are…and many of your other marked are, as is the common parlance, deviant. Are you…?” 

“I don’t know.” The Outsider stops, as if this question has never occurred to him. “I know it matters more in some places than others. Does it matter to you?” 

“Not really,” Stilton says. He doesn’t know whether he is pleased or horrified to know that the devil who walks among them is a lover of men. Does that reflect well on men like him, or poorly? “I was just wondering how many stories about you are true.” 

The Outsider crosses his legs. 

“You mean do I impregnate virgins and coax first sons away from their duties?” He shrugs. “Never on purpose.” 

“You’ve impregnated virgins…by accident?” 

“No, but I am a popular source of blame whenever someone comes down with a child they hadn’t planned on.” 

“Ah.” Stilton is tempted to pour another whisky, but the thought of Farid’s admonishment stays his hand. It also keeps him firmly on the other side of the room from the young man in his bed. “Oh, I should tell you. I’ve received word from Corvo. Or, the Duke has.” 

The Outsider sits up straight. The light in his eyes makes Stilton want to get drunker. This is ridiculous. He is a grown man. “Where is he?” 

“Still in Dunwall. But he and the Empress depart on the morrow. They should be in the city within the week.” 

"Thank you." The Outsider sounds almost breathless. "Thank you. I'll...I'm sorry I fell asleep in your bed." 

Stilton drains his glass. "No harm done." 

\--

True to Stilton’s word, Empress Emily Kaldwin and Lord Protector Corvo Attano take ship on the first day of the Month of Seeds, in a small, swift riverboat bound for Karnaca. The crew is small and handpicked, which allows them to leave Emily’s large personal guard behind in Dunwall. It’s a relief to get a breath of fresh air and a little space. She and her father spend the trip playing cards, climbing the rigging, and doing grapples on the deck, generally giving the sailors more of an eyeful of their Empress than they’d ever expected. She fights barefoot in shirtsleeves, with knives, with fists, with her eyes covered. The rolling of the ship makes for a good challenge. 

“Dammit!” she spits, the third time in a row Corvo pins her with one hand. 

“You’re just out of practice.” 

“I know that,” she snaps back. “A year of sitting on my ass. I hate being respectable.” 

Corvo puts a reasonable hand on her arm. “Your mother used to say the same thing.” 

“Did you train with her?” 

“Sometimes. Mostly we danced, or sat smoking on the roof while the sun came up.” 

Despite the frustrations, it’s the most free Emily has felt since her dark, stinking crawl through Karnaca’s underbelly two summers ago, which is both predictable and sad. There were days of climbing walls beneath the white hot sun, sprinting across rooftops, throwing herself across impossible distances, and felling men with a wave of her hand—and she would forget. Forget she was a Kaldwin with the weight of a crown on her head since she was eleven years old. Some nights on _The Dreadful Wale_ , over glasses of whisky and beneath Meagan Foster’s fox-like gze, she had considered never going back. They could just disappear. Fade into Morley or Tyvia, or even cross the ocean to the great continent, to a place she would never have to care about anything but herself and her own desires ever again. 

But there was her father, and the insult of having her crown stripped from her not once, but twice. And there was the seething gulf inside her where her duty once resided. Not the flickers of the Void but real, true power. Holding an Empire in the palm of her hand and knowing that her word is law. 

Maybe there are people out there strong enough to give that up, but Emily isn’t one of them. 

If she’d had it her way, they would arrive quietly, slipping in through the dock at the bottom of the cliff, moving swiftly up past the landings and courtyards, and the heated pool she’d tossed a clockwork soldier into when last she was here. But she can’t travel like that anymore. She’s the Empress. She comes in the front door. 

The Duke and his retinue meet them at the carriage station. “Majesty,” he greets her, kissing her hand in a firm bow with all the proper ceremony. 

“Duke Abele,” she smiles, glossy and reflective. “Thank you for this kind welcome. Karnaca is beautiful in the spring.” 

He smiles back, just as decorously, but she catches the hint of mischief in his eyes. The last time they’d spoken the two of them had shared a cigar, blowing smoke out the window as his twin slept the sleep of the very gently throttled. The resemblance between them is still without flaw, and he plays his role well. Emily sees it in the flex of Corvo’s hands toward his sword, the unconscious shifting of weight that would allow him to move easily into a blink. A blink he can no longer perform, but habits developed over a decade die hard. 

"May I introduce my Lord Protector, Corvo Attano." 

Much to Emily’s surprise, the Duke kisses Corvo's hand as well. There are a few titters in the attendant courtiers. If it surprises Corvo he doesn't let it show. Of course, Luca Abele is known for his shocking behavior; the new Duke will have had to at least keep some of it up. And kissing a bodyguard is, on the whole, harmless but liable to generate talk. Perfect. The ruse is kept and no maidens are debauched. 

Corvo stares at his hand for a few seconds after the Duke releases him. It's his left hand. Emily wonders if missing it hurts. 

-

“Please let me know if there’s anything as can be done for you, madam. I mean! M-Majesty!” The maid who has brought them to their rooms bows. She’s already done that twice. Emily finds the scraping deeply tiresome, but she tries not to hold it against her. 

“Thank you, that will be all.” 

She waits for the girl to scamper out, before joining Corvo on the balcony. The sun is setting across the bay and if she strains she thinks she can see the very edge of Addemire Island. 

"How does being back here feel?" her father asks, with a candidness that makes her sure he's already checked for eavesdroppers and recording devices. 

"Complex," she says. "I know it was only a year and a half ago, but it's already starting to feel like something that happened to someone else. One of the stories that Callista told me. A warrior-empress." 

Corvo smiles, a brief flash of pride in his eyes. Emily never experienced anything like the fear she felt the day he was taken from her, not even when her mother was killed. That had been raw panic and confusion. The experience of watching Delilah Copperspoon strip the Lord Protector's mark and cast him in marble was heavy with the certainty of what was happening. Magic, and a well-executed coup, all the pieces lined up until she had no choice but to leave the board. 

"What about you?" she asks. "How does it feel to be back? It's been what, twenty years?" 

Corvo leans on the railing with a soft breath. "Closer to thirty. Like you said, it almost feels like a story instead of a memory. I spent the first 18 years of my life here, but they don't have any...clarity to them. Nothing before I met Jessamine really does." 

Emily curls her fingers around the iron beside him. "We should go meet the Duke. I’ll show you the way to the pavilion.” 

Corvo’s lips curl. “I daresay you know the new Duke's palace better than he does." 

"The roofs at least. Aren’t you coming?” 

Corvo hasn’t moved from the balcony. “I’ll ask you to give the Duke my apologies. There’s a matter I need to see to in the city.” 

"Oh?" 

For a moment the Lord Protector is lit up in perfect silhouette against the setting sun. "Aramis Stilton sits at the center of whatever strangeness has blown up while you've been away. I want to get the lay of the land before I let you go anywhere near him." 

"I told you, Aramis is an ally." 

Corvo's shoulders rise and fall. "Alliances change. You know that better than anyone."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come talk to me on tumblr at bull-business i need dishonored friends please my family is starving


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all the kind comments, they give me life. and mind the rating bump.

Despite Emily’s warnings of high walls and strong doors, gaining access to the Stilton compound is as simple as strolling up the front walk. The house is surrounded by impressively paranoid infrastructure, but the gate is open and unguarded, as if the house’s owner trusts the people he rules over. Or, doesn’t rule over, exactly, since he isn’t a titled lord. Just a commoner with a great deal of money and influence. In Corvo’s experience, those sorts of people tend to be the most dangerous. Ambitious, with plenty to prove. Emily trusts him, but then again she trusted the captain of her guard as well. 

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?” she asked before he left the palace. “Just that I’ve got—.” She twitched her left hand. 

Corvo grunted. “The day I’m too old to break into a rich miner’s house is the day you can finally put me out to pasture, Your Majesty. Offer my regrets to the Duke.” 

In the end the most harrowing part of the experience is the approach through Battista, the old mine district, and the realization that he recognizes...nothing. Not the road names, the storefronts, or the fading posters on walls. All his memories have been painted over with time and regime changes. He doubts he could even find his way back to his old house. 

He makes his approach from the back, biding his time in a budding flower garden, hidden in a pool of deep shadow. The night is unseasonably warm, and a storm lurks on the edge of the horizon. Strange for this time of year. Corvo lurks in the shrubbery and listens to the distant thunder. 

The house is all lit up, but perfectly still. Nothing exciting on for tonight at the Stilton manner, then. Corvo locates a few easy access points—an open window beside a drainpipe, a cellar door rotted around the hinges. He could probably just walk in through the veranda; there doesn’t appear to be much of a guard presence. Makes for a nice change not to have to wrestle anyone unconscious. 

Still, something draws him to search the garden. Lived experience, more than anything. Better to waste a few minutes than be badly surprised later. He isn’t even really sure what he’s looking for here. Some evidence of foul play or dissidence. A breath of what had gone on here three years ago, with the window open to the Void. 

He doesn’t find any of those things. Instead he comes upon a young man in a gazebo, laid out on a pillowed bench, fast asleep. A book sits open on his chest, as if he’d put it down only a moment to rest his eyes. Beside him sits a decanted bottle of wine that looks untouched. Perhaps he’d been waiting for someone who’d failed to appear. 

Corvo knows he should accept his unconsciousness as the boon that it is and leave the man sleeping. One less person to incapacitate. But regardless he is drawn toward the gazebo and up the wooden steps. A tug in his chest and an itch behind his eyes, not unlike the pull of a bone charm. 

The thick piled rug muffles Corvo’s footsteps, but the boy still murmurs softly in his sleep. Corvo freezes, letting him settle back into quiescence. He looks around twenty, with high, sharp cheekbones and feathery hair worn long at the temples. A hot, frightening jolt of recognition hits Corvo, like touching a wall of light. No. It can’t be. There’s no way. 

But he looks so much like him. 

Before Corvo can help himself he’s reached out a hand. He doesn’t know if he intends to shake the boy, or just make sure he won’t burst apart into a darting school of black minnows, but he blinks awake before he can do either. His eyes are so grey they’re almost colorless. Something winched tight inside Corvo releases, relief and disappointment both. It’s not him. 

But then the young man smiles and says, “Corvo,” and it all tangles back up inside him, wrapping around his ribs. 

“What are you doing here?” he demands. 

The Outsider sits up and takes Corvo’s hand. His left hand. “I should ask you the same thing, Lord Protector. I doubt you walked in through the front door.” He brushes his lips across Corvo’s knuckles, a god kissing where a duke had earlier in the day. 

The Outsider showing up is not in itself so very strange, and neither is outlandish behavior. He’s appeared in all sorts of places. Back alleys, rooftops, sewers, ballrooms, bed chambers. But it was always in a swirl of darkness and smiles and gleaming black eyes. He’s never just been...napping. 

He stands. They’re almost of a height. Corvo has never noticed before, since he’s never seen him with his feet on the ground. They’re bare now, shapely and pale with long toes. 

“Aren’t you cold?” 

“Mm, not at all.” He smiles, like they’re sharing a joke. “Are you?” 

“No,” Corvo says automatically. “It’s much colder in Dunwall.” His brain feels disconnected from his mouth. This is...the Outsider, isn’t it? The same voice, the same face, but the eyes…

“It is me, my dear.” He leans in to say it against Corvo’s ear. 

“Why do your eyes look like that?” 

“It doesn’t matter.” 

“How can you say that?” 

“Kiss me.” 

The words hang in the fragrant night air, musical and still. 

“Wh-What are you—.”

The Outsider doesn’t wait for him to stutter through the question. He presses soft, dry lips to Corvo’s, his hands gripping the front of Corvo’s jacket. The touch is patient, but the sound he makes in the back of his throat is all hunger, and Corvo can’t stop himself from reacting to it. He’d have expected him to taste of the Void. Dark, electric, vast. Like kissing a leviathan. 

Instead it’s...charming. Intensely sincere in a way Corvo has almost forgotten it can be. 

He cups the Outsider’s jaw, the kiss opening up into an insistent press of tongues. The Outsider moans. It make something primal clench tight inside of Corvo. It also makes his brain catch up with his body. 

He pulls sharply back. 

“How—how are you here?” He presses a hand against the Outsider’s chest, holding him at arm’s length. Beneath the fine linen shirt his skin is warm and his heart beats frantically. 

_How are you alive?_ Corvo’s heard the question many times, from out of the mouths of marks as he loomed out of the darkness, a phantom of the Void here to punish them for their crimes. “How did you do it?” 

The Outsider wraps a hand around Corvo’s wrist. The position feels a bit like fighting, and a bit like dancing. The Outsider’s fingertips rest on his pulse. “I didn’t.” 

He leans in to kiss him again. 

Corvo takes a quick step back. “Wait, stop. I don’t understand.” 

The Outsider makes a sound of annoyance. “Agh! I’ve already waited for so long. For months!” His hands are so warm. “I thought you would never come!” 

“Never—wait, are you what all the letters were about?” Information compiles in Corvo’s mind; the strange tone of all the missives, the air of bafflement. “This? That—that the Outsider is a person?” 

The Outsider slowly lets his hands drop, giving Corvo enough space to take the measure of him. Willowy, with bony wrists and ankles, a pointed chin and eyes that don’t match the rest of his coloring. Clearly he’s gotten some sun; freckles dust the bridge of his nose. He must burn awfully. 

“We can talk inside,” he says. 

Corvo follows him up through the dim, quiet house, to a room with a large and unmade bed. 

Corvo raises his brows. “Talk, huh?” 

The Outsider’s grin goes sly. “You’ve caught me. Come here.” When Corvo doesn’t immediately step into his arms, he crosses them. He isn’t pouting, but he also isn’t _not_ pouting. 

“Whose room is this?” Corvo asks. 

“Mine. Aramis gave it to me.” 

“Aramis? Stilton?” A suspicion grips him. “Wait, is he one of yours?” 

“I’ve watched him but I’ve never offered him my mark. He’s important, but he’s not vital. Not like you, Corvo.”

It’s flattery. It’s always been flattery, and it has always worked. As foolhardy as it is to trust a god’s compliments, the Outsider’s words have always stroked Corvo’s ego. But it hasn't occurred to him that they might mean something beyond that—the Outsider using his gifts and sweet words and promises to coax Corvo to dance for his amusement. 

Now he wonders if he really might believe everything he says. _Corvo, you are precious. Corvo, you are dear to me above any other. Corvo, you fascinate me._

“Billie brought me here,” the Outsider says, and Corvo realizes he’s still answering his question. “She knows Aramis. They’re friends.” 

“Billie—Billie Lurk?” Corvo wonders if he should start taking notes. His head is spinning. “How do you—.” 

The Outsider’s hands land on his jacket again. “Listen, I’ll tell you everything. I promise. Just...after.” 

“After.” 

“Yes, after.” 

“After what?” He can take a hint, and this is more a painted signpost, what with the kiss and the dark bedroom, but he also categorically can’t believe that any of this is happening. 

The Outsider rolls his pale eyes. “After we have sex on this bed, which I have wanted to do for years. Well, not on this bed specifically. Any bed. Anywhere.” 

Corvo stares at him. Lidded eyes, soft, bobbing throat and a heartbeat he can still feel against him. “Years?” 

"Centuries." 

"Centuries—Outsider, I haven't been _alive_ for centuries." 

The Outsider frowns like he doesn't understand the issue. Corvo rubs at his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “I feel like I’m dreaming. Like you’ve pulled me into the Void.” 

The Outsider’s grin has always been a thing made of quicksilver—a darting flash in the darkness. Now he’s smiling at Corvo like he can’t help himself. “I haven’t seen any of your dreams lately. Are they often like this?” 

That’s an unsettling thought. “Lately?” 

“You know I watched you. When humans dream they are closer to my realm than they are to theirs. You think I wouldn’t watch you there as well?” 

Corvo sits down on the edge of the bed. He feels a bit like he did back when he first was gifted the Outsider’s mark—like something powerful and infinitely vast has turned its eye on him, and he now stands at the edge of a very, very long fall. He also feels the shock and perhaps misplaced pride at how he’d managed to inspire such passion in a young, beautiful god. 

_Young only to the eyes_ , he reminds himself. It’s a mistake to forget what the Outsider is, even if his control of the Void has been stripped from him. He will never be the young man he pretends to be. 

Pale eyes narrow. “I want you.” 

“I’ve gathered that,” Corvo says, his voice low. “Does it matter what I want?” 

The Outsider steps between his legs. Corvo’s hands come up to his hips before he can help it. “You want me too.” 

Corvo looks up at him. He should walk away from this. Every level of it introduces complications he can’t afford. That Emily can’t afford. Being snuck through a Karnacan Council member’s back garden to roll around with the bloody _Outsider_ in a guest room. 

Then again, the Abbey already believes he’s committed this particular sin. _The witch Empress and her whore father._

Slowly, he lets the tension melt from his body. The Outsider follows him onto the bed and Corvo presses rough fingertips to his cheek. He butts against his hand like a cat looking to be stroked, eyes dilated and breaths shallow. Corvo has barely touched him. 

A thick, insistent curl of interest winds through him. “Why me?” 

The Outsider cups his face between his hands. “Because the tides pull and you don’t move.” 

When he pushes Corvo down against the mattress, he doesn’t resist. 

They wriggle out of their clothes like eels, the Outsider clumsy with Corvo’s coat, tossing his crossbow and pistol onto the floor. 

“Be careful with those.” 

The Outsider kisses him, biting down on his lips to make him open his mouth. Then he takes Corvo’s mask and, with a deliberate motion, tosses it on top of the rest. 

Corvo grips his shoulders and tosses him down onto the bed. The Outsider goes without a fight, color high on his cheeks, eyes dark. He feels hectic. Hungry. “You little—.” 

The Outsider grins up at him. His eye teeth are unusually sharp. “Those tools are nothing compared to the tools that I gave you.” He takes Corvo’s left hand and brings it to his lips. “You were mine for fifteen years, and then she took you away from me.” 

Naked, he is pale and sleek in the faint light of the lamp, light striped primal across his skin. He drags his hands across Corvo’s back and chest, like he’s trying to read something in the burns and flogging scars. He isn’t a pretty sight unclothed, but it doesn’t occur to him to be ashamed. The Outsider already knows what he looks like. He knows him better than anyone. 

Their hips roll together, the Outsider breathing against Corvo’s neck, little shivers taking him at every bare inch of contact. Void, he’s sensitive. 

“Could you not feel when you were a god?” Corvo asks softly, even the heat of his words making the Outsider react. 

“I could, but it was—muted.” He keeps biting at his mouth, arching his back as Corvo’s fingers work their way down his spine. “It didn’t matter. Sensations, they—nothing felt like this.” 

“Do you touch yourself?” 

“Mm?” The Outsider’s pale eyes flutter open. Still so strange. “In the Void? No. I could have, maybe, but I didn’t feel the urge.” 

Corvo grunts, rough in his chest. “And since you’ve been human?” 

“Mmm…yes.” 

“Do you think about me?” 

The Outsider nods, almost frantic. “Only you, only you, Corvo—!” 

He kisses him, sloppy and artless, driving his body against him. There is almost an unbearable intimacy to this, the Outsider’s body so warm and lithe against him, his fingers fisted in his hair, the little shudders that running through him. The sheer delight he seems to take in simply being touched. This boy is, in a way, a stranger to Corvo, but he also knows him as well as his own shadow. He has burned through his veins and caught him inches from a fall. He’s watched over him through sewers and cells and almost certain death. He’s filled his body with power and the euphoric drive of life after death. 

“Corvo,” the Outsider gasps, and he realizes that he’s on the precipice of a climax, just from friction. The knowledge travels hot and insistent through his body, and he draws back before the Outsider can come. The helpless noise he makes is obscene, irresistible, and even more so because Corvo’s certain he isn’t putting it on. “Please, please, I want—.” 

Corvo kisses his throat. The Outsider groans and snakes a hand between them. Corvo catches it. “Patience.” 

The Outsider’s scowl is almost comical. “Don’t tell an immortal ‘patience’, Lord Protector.” 

Corvo laughs. He maneuvers them until he’s sitting up against the headboard, the Outsider’s back against his chest. He runs a hand over his arms, the lines of his ribs, and down to the sparse hair across his belly. His breath whistles in sharp as Corvo wraps a loose hand around his cock. It’s modestly sized, but well-formed and so very, very hard. The head is a soft pink, weeping with arousal, and when Corvo rubs his knuckles across it he jerks like he’s been electrocuted. 

“Corvo…” 

This is going to be the easiest toss-off he’s ever given. He could probably just offer the Outsider his hand to push against, let him bring himself off that way, but he wants to make him earn it. A fierce, almost frightening sense of power fills him as the body in his arms quakes just from his smallest attentions.

“Like this?” He strokes, quick and staccato. 

The Outsider tosses his head. “I don’t—yes, yes, I don’t know why it feels so good, I don’t understand—how does anyone live with this, with a body like this—!” He breaks off in a whine as Corvo lets go of him. “Please, please, Corvo, you can’t, I need—.” 

“What do you need?” 

“Do you want me to—.” The whine turns to a soft, desperate chuckle. “—Talk dirty? Should I beg?” 

A hard pulse of arousal shoots all the way to the tips of Corvo’s toes. “Well, you’re usually so good at talking. I’ve never met a man who likes the sound of his own voice more.” 

He touches him for a fleeting second, then lets go. The Outsider lets out a hard breath. “Is this punishment?” 

“Yes,” Corvo says, although he’s not really sure punishment for what. 

“I don’t know…mmmm…nn…what you want to talk about.” He’s shaking now, gasping, the slick noises of Corvo’s hand on his cock loud in the quiet room. 

The wind shakes budding leaves against the side of the house and somewhere in the distance a dog howls. Corvo has the distinct impression they have fallen out of time, into the Void, sinking beneath the waterline. 

“Tell me what it feels like,” he mutters against the Outsider’s neck. 

The Outsider grunts, bucking up into his grasp. Corvo lets go of him until he stops moving. “Hot,” he says, breathing out fast. “And tight, and…I don’t know, how do you describe pleasure?” 

Corvo kisses the back of his neck and strokes him until he’s desperate again, reveling in it, the trembling muscles and sweat gathering at the nape of his neck. Corvo doesn’t want for bed partners, but he isn’t used to this sort of shameless eagerness. _It’s because you don’t bed twenty year olds, old man_ , says his conscience, before the Outsider starts to whine in his throat, coming hard as Corvo rubs his palm against the twitching head. The Outsider makes an inarticulate noise, his heels pressing against the sheets, before he falls back against Corvo’s chest, panting. 

His mouth is wet and slack, and when Corvo kisses it the Outsider barely manages to kiss back. “Are you alright?” Corvo asks, unable to keep the smile out of his voice. He’s reduced him into a shuddering puddle, and he’d barely done anything. 

The Outsider tips his head back, all long, pale limbs and flushed cheeks in the moonlight. He wraps a hand around his own softening cock and his body gives a jolt. He releases a noise of gasping surprise. “Oh. Oh, it’s…” 

He flops down onto the mattress. Corvo’s own cock is still so hard it throbs along with his heartbeat. Sitting here and watching the Outsider squirm as he forces himself through shivering pulses of oversensitivity is not helping. 

“I still want—I want—.” He bites his lip, eyes flicking up to Corvo. “Fuck me. Now. Do it.” 

The command in his voice thunders through Corvo, as does the sight of him, loose and languid on the sheets, but already working himself back up. 

Still…”Have you done that before?” 

The Outsider shakes his head. 

“Then it’ll hurt.” 

“I don’t care.” 

“I do.” Pain can be good, but not for someone’s first time, even if that person is as old as the sea. “Here.” He edges forward, taking his cock in his hand and spreading his knees in front of the Outsider. His eyes flick up as Corvo feeds him his cock, opening his mouth with a little whimper. That, Corvo is pretty sure, is intentional, but that doesn’t stop it from making Corvo want to grab his hair and fuck his mouth. With a little practice, he’ll be devastating. 

Right now, he barely needs to be. Corvo is so worked up all it takes is a minute or so of sloppy heat and eager pressure, and he comes in the Outsider’s mouth. It feels like worship and sacrilege all at once. 

Despite his big talk, the Outsider falls into a contented doze within a minute of Corvo taking his fingers out of his hair. Corvo sits on the edge of the bed and waits for his heart to slow. The dream to fade. The world to right itself. 

When it doesn’t, he stands and goes to clean himself up in the washroom as best he can. 

His eyes are huge and haunted in the mirror, hair crumpled against his forehead. He looks the way he feels—like he was hit by a amarous cyclone. 

_You’re too old for this, Attano._

He stands at the sink and lets the Void flow away from him in its rhythmic way. He no longer possesses its power under his skin, but he can still feel it at the edges of himself. He doesn’t know if it’s because the creature who used to be the Outsider is asleep in the other room, or if it’s always there, always waiting, and he just knows how to feel for it. 

Corvo plans to rouse the Outsider before he takes his leave, but when he looks down at him curled in on himself, muscles loose and well-satisfied, he can’t bring himself to. He’d leave him a note, but there’s nothing here to write with, just a mess of books on the desk and flowing over onto the floor. It looks a lot like Corvo’s own study, honestly. 

He’ll go and return to the Grand Palace as quickly as he can. If nothing else, at least he can now assure Emily that the winter full of urgent summons does have to do with the Void, just not in the way they’d suspected. 

The plan lasts for all of ten seconds, as he lets himself into the corridor, quietly shuts the door behind him, and immediately bounces off a man in a handsomely brocaded housecoat. 

The man is solid enough that he doesn’t stumble, but he still gasps, slightly winded. “Lord Protector Attano, I presume?”

The lightning bolt of adrenaline rushing up Corvo’s spine stutters somewhat. Without thought he’s raised a hand to put the man in a chokehold. His eyes are wide, but he hasn’t yet screamed for the guards. 

The man is middle-aged, but at least a decade younger than Corvo, with a strong nose and round hazel eyes, his hair swept to the side and kept long to disguise a receding hairline. Not Serkonon born, from his coloring, but Corvo thinks he recognizes him. 

“Mr. Stilton.” His voice trembles. He’s off-balance. This whole night wavers with unreality. 

Stilton looks him up from top to bottom. “By the Void, the little bastard works fast. Drink?” 

Continuing this waking dream, Corvo finds himself installed in a billiards room in the back of the house, ushered into a seat and a drink put in his hand. He takes a careful sip. “This is the first time anyone whose home I infiltrated has offered me a whisky.” 

Stilton grins into his glass. He’d poured them both a Morley brand that Corvo has never heard of. He appears to be taking the Lord Protector’s sudden appearance in stride. _He knows Emily_ , Corvo reminds himself. 

“I admit, that isn’t the fastest a man has ever come and gone from a bedroom in my house,” Stilton says, as dry as the liquor. “But it’s the fastest without my involvement.” 

Corvo chokes lightly into his fist. “Um.” 

Stilton’s grin is decidedly toothy. “I was expecting you. Well, not tonight, at least. I’m not his father,” he says, before Corvo draws the breath to defend himself. “Did he go looking for you? I thought he was reading in the garden.” 

“He was,” Corvo says after a moment’s consideration. No point in denying it, really. All Stilton would have to do would be go upstairs and check the room; the evidence is there. 

“He falls asleep in the strangest places. He’s like a cat.” 

“Have you and he—.” Corvo rubs at his eyes before draining half his glass. “Forgive me, I’m just—a lot of things happened very quickly, and mentally I’m still about an hour behind.

Stilton’s expression softens slightly, a little of the smugness melting off. “I understand. I’m sorry, I haven’t been very kind. You are of course welcome in my house, Lord Attano.” 

“Corvo, please.” 

The faintest smile. “Corvo. And to answer your question—no. That’s not why he’s staying here. An old friend asked me to look after him as a favor, and as houseguests go he’s clean and fairly quiet, if often unnerving.” 

“You do know…who he is, don’t you?” 

Stilton pours himself another whisky. “The black-eyed boy? The Leviathan? The creature from the Void?” 

“Were you…” He’s unsure how to phrase it. “Were you one of...his?” 

“Not like you were,” Stilton says with a raised brow. “I ran with a crowd a few years back. They were...eclectic. I think you’re familiar with them.” 

Corvo sips his whisky. “More or less.” 

“They worshiped the Outsider for power, and out of boredom. Until Delilah.” 

“Right.” He doesn’t want to rehash the story, he’s heard it from Emily, and her account is the one he trusts. And speaking of Emily… “Thank you for the drink, Lord Stilton—.” 

“I’m not a lord,” Stilton says. “And Aramis is fine.” 

“Aramis. I need to get back to the palace. I didn’t mean to spend so long here, but—.” 

Stilton’s lips curve briefly. “But you got held up. I understand.” The look he’s giving Corvo is somewhat hard to pin down. “I think I see why he likes you so much.” 

Corvo doesn’t know what to say to that, so he says nothing. He sets his glass aside and stands. “I need to get back to Emily. Shall I send her your regards?” 

Stilton stands as well. “Of course. Better yet, I’ll present them in person. I’ll call at the palace tomorrow mid-morning. With a guest.” 

“I can’t show up to the palace with a strange young man—,” Corvo guesses, catching on. 

“—But it would be perfectly in character for me, yes.” Stilton smiles again, tired but kind. Corvo thinks he can see what makes the Battista miners look to him as a representative. There is nothing overtly radical about his looks or bearing, but there is something there all the same. A hard glint, a steel in his posture that speaks of battles fought and won. He offers Corvo a handshake, in the Gristol tradition. 

“Tomorrow, then.” 

-

Corvo no longer possesses the power of the Void, but he has little trouble sneaking back into the palace. For a fortress on the edge of the water, it sure has plenty of low walls and flat roofs for an enterprising former assassin to make use of. He hauls himself up to a balcony, and nearly walks into his second unexpected body of the night. 

“Emily, Outsider’s bloody—.” 

The Empress cocks an eyebrow. “Sorry.” She doesn’t sound especially sorry; she sounds drunk. The half-empty wine bottle on the table, and the hastily tied piece of silk around her left hand deepens the impression. It’s not like her to be so indiscreet. 

“Are you alright. Did—.” Ocean’s mercy, if something happened while he was gone, if Abele’s elite guard hadn’t been enough to protect their Empress. “Did something happen?” 

“While you were out communing with the Void?” Her lips quirk. 

Surprise, followed by a rush of bewildered shame hurtles through Corvo. “Where did you—how—.” 

“I was too. Well, probably not in the way you were, but…” She twitches her left hand. Corvo looks closer, and that’s when he sees the light leaking out from around the silk. It’s not that she’s wrapped it badly. It’s simply lit up like a ghostly lighthouse. 

Emily sighs and stands up. “Let’s talk somewhere more discreet. I know better than anyone how these galleries echo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you thought this was going to be a deep, nuanced character dive, well. you're right. but there's also going to be a lot of fucking. 
> 
> i hope to get it all wrapped up next chapter, but it's possible I'll add on an epilogue. 
> 
> come find me on tumblr at bull-business


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